Zimbabweans are fiercely divided over whether girls under 18 should access contraception and reproductive health services without their parents’ knowledge, with ordinary citizens pushing back against what many see as a false choice between morality and public health.
The debate erupted on This Morning on Asakhe, a daily current affairs programme hosted by CITEZW on X, where contributors squared off over one of Zimbabwe’s most contested social questions.
“Families are broken. That’s the real problem”
For Unick Sinyoro, the push to expand minors’ access to reproductive health services misses the point entirely.
“If we as adults are not able to have responsible sex, what can we expect from young people?” he said. “It goes back to who is taking care of them. Families are broken down.”
Sinyoro said Zimbabwe needed to confront the collapse of family structures and parental responsibility rather than making it easier for children to access services that, in his view, tacitly accepted their sexual activity.
“Should we then say, since the girl is pregnant, that we should just promote her life and shut down the conversation?” he asked.
“You can’t wish away a reality that’s already happening”
Beth took a different view. She said Zimbabwe’s instinct to frame everything through a moral lens was preventing honest conversation about what young people were actually doing.
“We take things from a moral perspective rather than being realistic. We cannot say children are not supposed to be having sex at this age and then shut down the reality that they actually are,” she said.
She argued that health facilities had a responsibility to both warn young people about the risks of early sexual activity and ensure they could get help if they needed it.
“We need to tell them they are not supposed to be having sex, but if they do, they need access to medical facilities. Because the reality, according to the statistics, is that they are,” Beth said.
She added that abstinence messaging and sex education were not mutually exclusive, and that Zimbabwe needed both.
“We are talking about girls who are already mothers”
Contributor Masi said the public debate had been clouded by deliberate misrepresentation, and that those pushing for change were not, as critics claimed, trying to encourage children to have sex.
“There is always a lot of misrepresentation about the intentions behind this,” he said. “The group being restricted from healthcare is a very specific one, the girl child whom Zimbabwe already recognises as a mother, while she is still legally a child herself.”
He posed a question that visibly unsettled the discussion.
“If a nine-year-old girl gives birth in a hospital in Zimbabwe and goes home that same day as a parent, what should happen to her right to make decisions about her own health?” he said.
The question is not merely philosophical. Under current Zimbabwean law, anyone under 18 is generally considered incapable of consenting to reproductive health services, meaning health workers cannot assist minors without a parent or guardian’s approval, even in cases involving abuse, coercion or child marriage.
Advocacy groups including the Access Task Force have called on Parliament to change the law, arguing the blanket age restriction is leaving the most vulnerable girls without protection. Teenagers already account for between 21 and 33 percent of all antenatal bookings nationally, and experts say the true figure is higher, as many pregnancies go unregistered.
Parliament has yet to act.
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